Don't Get Your Plain Form in My Keigo!

It's snowing.

In order to improve my Japanese listening and comprehension, I should be listening to Japan music. Unfortunately, it seems that I've moved to French music instead.

So there are some interesting occurrences when you have a very agglutinative language, as opposed to a moderately analytic language. Japanese, which you know, is all about the politeness, shows degrees of politeness mostly with the conjugation you use, and to a lesser degree with your word choice. So, if I want to be super-polite, I'll use keigo conjugations (and words), and if I want to be "rude" or friendly (when I'm around friends), I should be using the normal conjugations.

So, like, today, I was coming into work. And there was this coworker behind me. So, we walked to the office together, and she was totally like "ohayo," and I was thinking to myself "excuse me? Where's the gozaimasu? Since when are we on friendly terms?" so I responded with the moderate level of politeness I use for everyone. Again, she spoke, and again it was jishokei! "Ma'am, who do you think I am? Imma hafta go sonkeigo all over this conversation if this continues."
"Konban, kuru no?"
Ok, that's it, I warned you. "Moshi kureba, gorenraku itashimasu." Bam! Pow! Slapped in the face with humble keigo.

Ok, that's 90% not how it really happened. Meh, you can find the 10% yourself.

I've got an enkai tonight and another one tomorrow night. And then another next week. It's too much, it's killing me. Or, it will kill me. I can't decide. I'm looking forward to this weekend to just chill and work off the effects of too many enkais. Very calm and relaxed, I hope.

At my last enkai, I learned the word skinshippu. It's a combination of skin and friendship, and it's what they call the fact that they touch each other way too much for my comfort. It's just...too much. I've always felt uncomfortable about it when they touch me (not inappropriately, but just too much for men), and I only put up with it because that's how they treat each other. Finally, one of them asked about skinshippu in the US, and I told him how weird it was to me. He couldn't believe it, and was very surprised. And that's the story of how I learned a new word.

Well, that's about it for now. See you later.